Christmas Day house fire kills 5 in Stamford

Hour photo / Matthew Vinci Stamford fire and rescue teams work outside of a home at 2267 Shippan Ave. in Stamford after a fire broke out at 5 a.m. Christmas morning, killing five occupants.

Hour photo / Matthew Vinci Stamford fire and rescue teams work outside of a home at 2267 Shippan Ave. in Stamford after a fire broke out at 5 a.m. Christmas morning, killing five occupants.

Photo: (C)2011, The Hour Newspapers, all rights reserved

Photo: (C)2011, The Hour Newspapers, all rights reserved

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Hour photo / Matthew Vinci Stamford fire and rescue teams work outside of a home at 2267 Shippan Ave. in Stamford after a fire broke out at 5 a.m. Christmas morning, killing five occupants.

Hour photo / Matthew Vinci Stamford fire and rescue teams work outside of a home at 2267 Shippan Ave. in Stamford after a fire broke out at 5 a.m. Christmas morning, killing five occupants.

Photo: (C)2011, The Hour Newspapers, all rights reserved

Christmas Day house fire kills 5 in Stamford

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STAMFORD -- Tragedy struck an upscale Stamford community on Sunday when an early morning fire tore through a home on Shippan Avenue, killing five people -- two adults and three children.

As firefighters removed the last body from the house, Mayor Michael Pavia walked away from the burned out home at 2267 Shippan Ave. with his head hung low, his eyes red and welled with tears.

"It is a tragic day in the city of Stamford," he said. "We lost five people today. This is just unimaginable."

Officials said the fire, which was reported shortly before 5 a.m., killed two adults and three children. Two others escaped. Their names have not been released. Officials said the occupants were asleep on the second floor when the fire broke out.

"It is a terrible, terrible day for the city of Stamford," Pavia told reporters at the scene of the fire. "There probably has not been a worse Christmas Day in the city of Stamford."

Acting Fire Chief Antonio Conte said attempts by firefighters to rescue the house's occupants were pushed back by intense flames and heat.

He said fire officials do not yet know the cause of the blaze and will not likely get clues for a few days until fire marshals can enter the house "and figure out what happened."

Conte said he did not know the conditions of the two survivors.

"We had our hands full from the moment we arrived on the scene," he said.

A neighbor, Sam Cingari Jr., said he was awakened by the sound of screaming and that the house was entirely engulfed by flames.

"We heard this screaming at 5 in the morning," he said. "The whole house was ablaze and I mean ablaze."

Cingari says he does not know his neighbors, who he said bought the house last year and were renovating it.